


Four Little Dæmons

by WhisperElmwood



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Abuse, Child Abuse, Coming of Age, Dæmons verse, Eventual Hartwin, Family, Gen, His Dark Materials Inspired, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 22:08:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4454198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhisperElmwood/pseuds/WhisperElmwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone has the story of how their dæmon settled. These are Eggsy, Merlin, Harry and Roxy's stories.</p>
<p>(Will eventually be the introduction story to a larger fic.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Little Dæmons

 

**Eggsy**

Cynisca settles early.

Dean hits Eggsy so hard that night that his ears ring and his lip splits. His Mum screams, her crow dæmon Herodotus screeching from a high bookshelf, she tries to pull Dean away, but that just makes him hit her too and then kick Eggsy where he lays.

Eggsy swallows the blood rather than spit it out, that would just give his Mum more mess to clean up, more for Dean to rant about. As soon as Dean's back is turned, he climbs to his feet, gathers Cynisca, currently a cat trying to hide behind him from Dean's massive ugly British bulldog, into his arms and runs. He's unsteady on his feet, bounces off the wall and opens the front door with shaky hands, Cynisca now a mouse in the hood of his sweatshirt.

He's eight years old and already learned the worst parts of humanity.

Cynisca changes, something bigger, fluffier, not quite cat sized and nuzzles into his neck as he runs. When he scrambles up a wall, grabbing hand holds on a drain pipe he learned to climb too long ago now, she leaps off his shoulder and onto the wall, starts climbing up beside him.

After a moment of keeping pace with him, she races ahead, and that's something else they can do that sets Dean off and the other kids calling him a freak, only witches are supposed to be able to do it. Or people where something went wrong. Not eight year old boys from South London. Cynisca can move much further away from him than she has any right to be able to. But it's something they learned together, first because of gymnastics, it just made things easier, then because of Dean. Made it easier to get away from him if he thought Eggsy was closer than he really was, made it easier to climb higher and further away if Cynisca could climb at her own pace and he didn't have to carry her, worry about her.

He reaches the roof after Cynisca and finds her sitting at the top watching him, little hand-like paws clinging to the concrete siding. He pulls himself up and flops onto his back, lower legs dangling over the four story drop.

"Dean is a bad man. D'ye think we should tell Miss Littleton?"

Eggsy sighs and sits up, brushes his fingers gently down Cynisca's furry back, cards them through her fluffy tail. She's a squirrel again, the form she finds easiest to use to keep up with him when he runs and climbs.

"She won't listen, teacher's never do," he says quietly, prodding at his shiner carefully. It's going to be a bad one, but even still, no one around here ever says anything, Dean's just too big a Big Man, too many people in his pockets, too many people scared of him. Even at only eight years old he knows this, he sees too much, hears too much.

Cynisca jumps up into his lap, snuggles her furry little body into his stomach, "We're always gonna be runnin' from'im, ain't we?"

Eggsy cradles her to his chest, pulls his feet up to the lip of the roof and curls around her, "Yeah. But one day we'll be big an' strong too, an' then we c'n get outta there, an' bring Mum an' Herod with us, look after'er just like th'man said we should."

Eggsy thinks back and pictures the sad, kindly looking man and his enormous cat dæmon who had visited, talked about his dad. He'd looked so posh, and talked so nicely, but he'd still been sad when he gave him the medal and told Eggsy an' Cyna to take of Mum an' Herod. They'd never seen him again, but Eggsy remembered him.

"Why couldn't th'man help us?" Cynisca noses into his collar, bites gently at the chain around his neck that carries the medal his father had earned by dying.

"This ain't importan' enough for him, Cyna. Tha's a one time thing. Wanna keep it 'til it gets real bad." As bad as things are, he has a feeling one day they might get worse.

Cynisca nods against his collarbone, her fur tickling his neck as she mumbles, "Oxfords, not brogues." They still don't know what it means, but they dutifully remember it, for some far off time when they think they might actually need it. It's sort of become a safety net for them, if they don't call that number, then it's not so bad they can't live through it. Just one more time. Just one more time, every time.

They don't go home 'til all the lights in their flat are off, telling them Mum an' Dean have gone to bed.

When Eggsy wakes up in the morning, Cynisca is still a squirrel, and she never changes again.

\----

**Merlin**

Callum is actually a fair bit older than average when Scáthach settles. And it's all because Scáthach, and, well, Callum too, enjoys the shifting games so much.

Every day, Scáthach is something new, something they spent the night before looking up and deciding on. They try to find exotic things for her to be, strange things, searching through the library in his parent's home, ransacking every book they can find that features even a small selection of animals to look at. Scáthach likes to fly, so they both gravitate to birds, flying insects, even specialized flying mammals or reptiles. Of course, she shifts and changes during the day, too, as or when needed, but always goes back to the animal they decided on for the day.

His parents find it amusing, at first, find it an immature yet charming distraction, something to amuse his younger siblings and cousins with, it's the 60's after all, quickly becoming the 70's, things are more relaxed. But things change when he hits puberty and Scáthach doesn't settle, and keeps not settling. Not completely at first, just his parents get a little less tolerant, don't smile indulgently as often.

When he's twelve, going on thirteen, his parents lose their tolerance for it completely. His mother berates him whenever she sees Scáthach in a new form, his father talks about sending them to a psychiatrist. Eventually, just after his thirteenth birthday, they actually do it.

Callum is sullen and annoyed, Scáthach hiding in his shirt pocket in beetle form. The psychiatrist watches in silence for a little while.

"Callum, do you know why you are here?" The doctor his parents sent him to has a strong Glaswegian accent.

Callum nods, crosses his arms over his chest. Dr Abernathy smiles at him, but he just rolls his eyes at her, unimpressed.

"May I see Scáthach?" The doctor's own dæmon sits by her side, a droopy looking blood hound that watches him carefully. After a long, silent moment of deliberation, Callum sits up and uses one finger to pull the pocket on his shirt open wide enough for Scáthach to climb out. She leaps into the air and lands on his shoulder, where she shifts to the form they wanted to use today, a magnificent magpie.

Dr Abernathy studies them both for a moment, as Callum shifts in his seat and Scáthach preens herself a little, both uncomfortable with the attention.

"Well, Scáthach appears perfectly fine. Can you tell me a little about why your parents sent you to me?"

Callum huffs, Scáthach nips at his hair a little and he pushes gentle fingers through the feathers on her chest. "Because they think I'm broken. Scáthach and I, we just like shifting! It's fun, and makes my little sisters laugh." He pauses, scowls at the floor, "It used to make Ma and Da laugh, too."

Dr Abernathy smiles again, "Your sisters enjoy Scáthach's different bodies? Do your sisters dæmon's join in?"

"Sometimes. But they're little, and shift all the time anyway, get tired quickly, so we play games and make them laugh."

"Do you always choose shapes that can fly?"

Callum pauses again, "Yeah. Scáthach likes to fly, it's more fun. We can see so much. And the feeling she gets up in the sky is amazing." Callum pauses, memories of the exhilaration Scáthach feels as she flies coming back to him. It really is one of the best feelings.

Callum shouldn't be listening, but he and Scáthach sneak up close to the old, thick door to the therapy room and do it anyway. Dr Abernathy tells his parents there's nothing wrong with him, that he's just going through a phase and they should ride it out.

He sits back down in the plush chairs of the waiting room before he can hear their response. He's pretty sure it won't be something he wants to hear anyway. His Mum ruffles his thin hair on the way home and gives him a wan smile. His Dad just says nothing.

By the time he's fourteen, Scáthach has settled, into a beautiful little merlin, bright eyes, blue grey wings and tan chest feathers. Her yellow taloned grip is strong and her flight a gorgeous sight to behold. She sits on his shoulder whenever they're inside and nips at his ear or preens his ever thinning hair. When they're outside, she flies, enjoying the wind in her feathers, the freedom flight provides.

\---

**Roxy**

Pheidippides settles exactly on time.

Roxanne Georgina Morton is ten years old, and she does everything exactly as expected. Except for Pheidippides.

All of Roxanne's friends have fluffy cats or droopy dogs, one or two have pretty little birds, a tiny handful have something more exotic but still small or droopy or pretty. There's just something about the families her parents associate with, the families who send their kids to the school she attends, that means almost all of them have the same trends amongst their dæmons. She doesn't find out until much later that it's a class thing.

Roxanne does very well in school, achieves perfect marks in all her classes, joins after school activities with her friends and never gets in trouble. She does, however, prefer her sports classes to her dance classes. Her parents eventually relent and allow her to join the girl's under twelve football team. She loves it.

Pip follows the trend, at first, spending his days as fluffy cats, pretty birds and long legged droopy dogs to keep up with her when she runs. And run she does, rain or shine, kicking a ball or not. She climbs trees and comes home with grass stains and scraped knees. Her mother clucks her tongue at her and her father simply smiles and shakes his head. Pip always keeps up with her, enjoys the rough and tumble of her preferred games.

As Roxanne gets more adventurous, so does Pip. At eleven, he no longer sticks to the fluffy cats or pretty birds of her friends. Even when she attends her ballroom dancing classes, Pip follows along as a grinning monkey, a prancing fox, a rugged mountain goat.

At twelve, she's a perfect little lady, in every way but one.

At twelve, Roxanne becomes Roxy and Pheidippides settles. She comes down from bed one morning, Pip trailing after her, and finds her mother, father and little sister already at breakfast. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, it is summer break after all and even Roxy likes to sleep in on occasion, she doesn't notice their stares at first.

But then she does. "What?"

Her father cocks one eyebrow at her, "Roxy dear, perhaps Pip is a little big for the breakfast table." His own golden retriever dæmon, Splendid, is lying at his feet, her head raised to see what's going on.

Roxy slides a hand into the short, smooth fur on Pip's shoulder. He is pretty big, almost as tall as she is. She looks at him, their eyes actually level, and smiles. "Can't change anymore, this is Pip now." She grins at her family, Pip doing the same in his doggy fashion, tongue lolling.

Pheidippides has settled, and he's settled into the biggest Doberman Pinscher anyone has ever seen. He's all sleek lines and black fur with tan patches, docked ears in a high point over his head, undocked tail wagging gently, almost uncertainly behind him. Roxy pats his shoulder, immensely proud of him. Like this he's strong, agile and more than able to keep up with her. Admittedly, he's also a little intimidating.

Roxy's parents share a look, expressions she can't parse, but her little sister drops from her chair, little robin dæmon fluttering his wings for balance on her shoulder and approaches Pip, staring up at him. After a moment, Splendid and Mum's common tabby cat Rosencrantz join Alicia and her little Sanderson. Pip crouches down, lies flat on his belly and says "Hello" with a doggy smile.

"He's so big!" Alicia says excitedly, "I want Sandy to get big!"

Sanderson flutters over and drops onto Pip's head, twittering and preening at his short fur. Rosencrantz sidles over and rubs himself all down Pip's side before curling up into a tight ball in the crook of his left foreleg, then Splendid presses her nose to Pip's before licking once and settling back on her haunches with a nod, tongue lolling.

"Welcome to being grown up," she says with her own doggy smile.

Roxy shares a smile with her parents as Alicia laughs and returns to breakfast.

\----

**Harry**

Harry is in Africa when Seraphine settles.

Seraphine has never been anything but predatory animals, apparently even when he was a babe, Seraphine had been rats, lizards, snakes, cats. So when he is five and they move to Kenya, no one is surprised that Seraphine begins to take on the bodies of lions, cheetahs, hyenas, African wild dogs, monitor lizards, cobras; in short, all the predatory animals of Africa.

Harry spends his days with his Nannies, teachers and the servants. Sometimes he escapes their careful watches and plays with the local kids, quickly picking up Bantu Swahili, a little Kamba, Meru, Luo, from travelers, traders and workers, children and elders. He's a bright eyed, curly haired, cherub of a child and he plays it up with everyone he meets, knowing he can get things more easily that way though not quite understanding why.

Seraphine worries everyone, though. Even the other kids, at first so delighted that she becomes a lion, crocodile, hyena, soon begin to be worried by this little boy in immaculate clothing, trotting along beside a huge predatory animal. More than once, he sees local women make signs of protection as he scampers past.

His Mama and Papa don't know what to do about it, and are never around often enough anyway, both too busy with whatever work sent them to Kenya in the first place. One teacher comments that historically, such dæmons have been connected to great leaders, kings, great warriors. Harry doesn't care what people think or say, he just likes the way Seraphine radiates danger and strength.

At about nine years old, a year or so before they return to England, Seraphine starts cycling through only the African wild cats. Lions, cheetahs, leopards, caracals, all that they know of or have seen. He likes that now she's always graceful as well as dangerous, and soft as well as strong. When his Nannies go looking for him in order that he attend his classes, they find the two of them curled around each other on high walls, or rocks, in patches of shade to escape the heat of the sunlight, sleeping comfortably and disturbed by no one.

On the last night in Kenya, after the house is all packed up, almost everything already taken away to be shipped to their new home back in England, Seraphine becomes a caracal again. They like this form, she's used it before, it's powerful like the other big cats, strong and graceful and soft, but smaller and more manageable than a lion, with a prettier face.

His Mama smiles absently, Papa doesn't even notice, they're both so busy making sure everything is correct and ready, speaking with the servants and his Nanny. So they run and play in the gardens one last time, say goodbye to the friends they made, and sit and watch the world go bye.

"I'm going to miss this, Sera."

Seraphine curls around him, tail and ears twitching as she watches the people passing them, the variety of dæmons with them. "I don't really remember England" she offers with a feline sigh.

"Nor do I," Harry says quietly, ruffling the fur on the back of her neck. "Do you think it'll be as nice as here? Do you think Mama and Papa will have more time?"

Seraphine licks at his fingers and shrugs her shoulders the best a feline body can.

Harry snorts a little, "Yeah, I don't think so either. Might have better trees to climb, though."

"Maybe we can make some more friends?"

Harry sighs and wraps his arms around her, snuffling his nose into the fur between her shoulder blades. They sit and watch people and dæmons, cars and buses and stray dogs and wildlife until the sun begins to hit the horizon and the shadows get long.

The next morning, Seraphine is still a caracal and she stays that way, even when they finally reach England and she startles the new Nanny.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought very carefully about each dæmon. I'm sure we all have our own headcanons for this verse, but this is mine. I even carefully thought about the dæmon's names. 
> 
> I also had fun choosing Merlin's real name, and hope you enjoy.


End file.
